MAY 13, 1969: Race riots less of a spectre to young Malaysians

By Carolyn Hong, The Straits Times, 13 May 2012

Mr Leong Chow Pong was not yet born when the May 13, 1969 race riots ripped through Kuala Lumpur, leaving deep scars in people like his parents and grandparents.

'My mum told us she was walking to work at the factory at night when she saw people running away. It was only when she reached the factory that she found out violence had broken out,' said the 30-year-old executive in a multinational company.

A government curfew forced her to spend the night at her workplace. But she has said little else and, until today, Mr Leong's parents do not talk much about that time.

'They still have that 'the walls have ears' sort of mentality,' he said.

His mother's story is about the only resonance that May 13, 1969 holds for him.

The race riots may have little emotional significance for Malaysians born after that day, but the event is raised regularly as a bogeyman in times of intense political competition, as at the present.

Two years ago, a group of Malay non-governmental organisations calling itself Gerakan Kebangkitan Rakyat held a May 13 rally with the theme, 'Malays arise'. The event was attended by former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad.

Last month, Tun Dr Mahathir raised the topic again. 'Fear of race riots recurring helped to keep the Barisan Nasional parties together. And so from 1971 until today the country enjoyed peace and stability under BN governments,' he wrote in his widely read blog, chedet.cc

Disputes remain as to what exactly happened on May 13, 1969. The established facts are that the opposition made sweeping gains in the general election on May 10, and held large processions in Kuala Lumpur on May 11 and May 12.

On May 13, Umno Youth members gathered in the capital's Malay enclave of Kampung Baru. Soon after, violence broke out mainly between Malays and Chinese, with many properties and vehicles torched. The official account put the death toll at just below 200.

The riots proved the catalyst for drastic change, beginning with the creation of a wide-ranging pro-Malay affirmative action programme called the New Economic Policy (NEP). It was aimed at narrowing the economic gap between the Malays and the other races, especially the Chinese.

The four decades of its existence and the reality of race-based quotas in education, jobs and business have forced Malaysians to constantly view each other through the race lens.

The NEP was officially ended in 1990 but lives on in different forms. Some of its contentious provisions, though, have been dismantled.

Dr Mahathir removed racial quotas for university intake in the late 1990s, while Prime Minister Najib Razak discarded the quotas for equity ownership in public-listed companies three years ago.

But the affirmative action philosophy itself remains intact, as in Mr Najib's setting up of institutions to nurture Malay firms, for instance.

Political analyst Ooi Kee Beng, deputy director of Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, said May 13 was too big an event to ever be forgotten.

But he also attributed much of the traumatic memory of that day to the constant retelling of the story and politicisation by the Malaysian government.

'The ghost is still there. However, young minds also contain other ghosts and other traumas that are more personally experienced, such as being treated unfairly...being taken for fools by the government or any political party, being kept poor while others prosper unjustly,' he said.

'Poverty and the lack of social mobility are traumas that traverse the generational gap much more deeply than images of chaos from 43 years ago. Basically, there are many more traumas to exorcise than May 13.'

To a younger generation, the ghost of May 13 no longer hovers as menacingly, especially after the 2008 general election which dealt the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition losses that mirrored the fateful 1969 poll outcome.

Despite heightened race rhetoric then, Malaysia remained calm. Mr Leong, for one, said it never occurred to him during and after the 2008 elections that race riots might be a possibility.

He felt that, as long as the country's opposition stayed multi-racial, the chances of widespread clashes would be minimised.

Mr Hafiz Noor Shams, 29, an economist with a private bank, felt Malaysians might have moved past their obsession with race as the inequality gap between the races narrowed - except that they were constantly reminded of it through the NEP.

Dr Ooi said the NEP had clear goals to correct historical conditions not conducive to Malaysian nation-building, and had been programmed to end in 1990.

'But it was kept going,' he said. 'The deepest trauma is actually the one perpetuated by a political establishment that lives off the fear of racial irrationality.'

Despite this, some young people like Mr Leong and MrHafiz say their friendships with people of different races have not been coloured by May 13.

'In fact, I didn't even realise that today is May 13,' said Mr Hafiz.